


An Inkling

by showmeurteef



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Begging, Body Horror, Bottom Im Changkyun | I.M, D/s undertones, Food mention, Magic, Near Drowning, Other, Tentacle Sex, Top Yoo Kihyun, changkyun monsterfucker nation, choking (with tentacles), kinda sad, nonbinary bbs, past queerphobia mention, questioning changkyun, slight bondage (with tentacles), tentacle porn with a side of me trying to have thoughts, they/them kihyun, vague past death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-24 07:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21334327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showmeurteef/pseuds/showmeurteef
Summary: “Humans, I swear...” The voice dissolves into a frustrated sigh, but stays put. Just beyond Changkyun. Just a little farther into the cave. “I’ll explain what’s going on, but, please, lie back down. I’m trying to save your life.”sad queer changkyun goes n gets himself shipwrecked (insert shipping joke) but sea monster kihyun, aka Big Sexy themself, is there for himextended/explained warnings within - including extended sea monster ki description so u can see if its too much body horror for u!
Relationships: Lim Changkyun | I.M/Yoo Kihyun
Comments: 20
Kudos: 132





	An Inkling

**Author's Note:**

> warnings (contains spoilers):  
-the queerphobia in this is past mentions of shitty family/town, n more metaphoric with kihyun  
-changkyun is never really Scared of kihyun/their body, so the body Horror factor isn't too intense imo  
-kihyun has: tentacles coming out of back/chest, some smooth (like a snake), others with toothy suckers, giant squid eye in the back of throat, squid fins on cheeks, squid beak in crotch area  
-i am not cave or fish expert. i am but a humble tentacle porn enthusiast. so pls pretend the things i say make sense

_Drip_.

Cold. Cold and wet. Against Changkyun’s skin, between his temples, down to his bones.

_Drip_.

He tries to move, but his limbs just flop uselessly against hard, slick ground. One hand lands in a shallow puddle. His thighs slap against sharp ridges. Hard, slick. Uncomfortable. Rock.

_Drip_. 

He tries to speak, but his lungs _burn_ and his throat _aches_ and his questions just turn to sandpaper against his tongue. 

His eyes peel open. Salt clings to their corners and gets caught under their lids. It hurts. He hurts. Everything _hurts_. He might as well have left his eyes closed because everything is dark—so, so dark, and the dark is veiled by stinging tears, and he has _no idea_ where he is, and he can’t see _anything_, and—

Squelching. Slapping. Footsteps.

A surge of panicked, jittery strength propels him upwards, but it isn’t enough to lift his leaden body more than a few inches off the ground. He must’ve been pumped full of wet cement while he slept, and now it's oozing out beneath him, gluing him to the rock. He cries out. 

Heavy, wet footsteps smacking the ground, getting closer. _Faster_.

“Hey, hey! Stop— don’t freak out, human.”

_Human?_ Human. Human implies that whoever —or _whatever_— spoke isn’t human. Meaning, _non_-human. _Meaning_... 

Meaning, Changkyun freaks out.

He splutters out every curse word he's ever heard through the hot gravel in his throat and lungs. By some miracle, he manages to roll over, even as his muscles threaten to shred themselves to bits. 

“Don’t strain yourself, Changkyun. Seriously, you’re going to—”

“How the _hell_ do you know my name? Who— _what are you?_” Changkyun shouts and pushes himself onto his hands and knees. Dark, swirling clouds clog his brain, his vision. He sways. He aches. He shivers. “_Where_ are you? D-don’t come _any closer_, I swear to god— not until you tell me what the _fuck_ you are.”

His voice hangs in the air, echoing against his ears and stretching out into the deep, dark nothingness ahead. He squints. Presses his palms against the cool rock. Inhales salt and stone and water. A cave. Near the ocean. 

He’s in a pitch black sea cave, barely able to keep himself upright, speaking to someone who_ isn’t human_. He wishes he could pass back out, trade this endless dark for another; at least he’d be alone inside his own head.

“_Humans_, I swear...” The voice dissolves into a frustrated sigh, but stays put. Just beyond Changkyun. Just a little farther into the cave. “I’ll explain what’s going on, but, please, lie back down. I’m _trying_ to save your _life_.”

Dizziness beats against Changkyun’s skull in waves of icy sludge. He wants to see whoever’s speaking. He wants to talk back. He wants to _run away_. The ground beneath him pitches forward, bile rises in his throat. He collapses onto his stomach.

“Stay as still as possible, okay? I’ll try to clarify everything, but you’ve been hurt pretty badly, and I—”

“Hurt? _Hurt?_ Oh, fuck. _Shit_. Am I okay? What happened? Holy fuck, am I going to— ”

Terror bubbles beneath Changkyun’s skin. He didn’t even bother to inspect himself, to make sure he was still in one piece. Is this what it feels like to bleed out? To have been attacked by a wild animal? To _die?_

He starts to push himself up onto his forearms, and is immediately shoved back down by something solid and damp. It clings to his shirt and coils around his torso, pinning him to the rock.

“_Shut up_ and _stop moving!_ For fuck’s sake. You’re just going to make it harder on yourself.”

Anger clips the voice’s syllables and submerges its vowels in mud, but Changkyun doesn’t give a shit about how pissed the someone, something is— he might be dying. He twists his neck around to look at his back. And screams.

A tentacle. Thick. Glossy. The color of thunder. A tentacle, wrapped around his middle, pressing him into the floor of some cave, somewhere.

He passes back out.

The quiet, empty solitude just behind Changkyun’s eyelids offers no safety. The walls of his skull are cold, rigid, uneven. His brain settles against them like wet paper pulp. 

And something _still hurts_. Something still hurts. Something...

He melts back into consciousness, and finds that he’s sitting up against the cave wall now, swaying with dizziness. A dull, white light comes from somewhere far or near, above or below, throwing strange shadows against the rock. It’s disorienting. Impossible. The solid, grayish tentacle is still looped around his torso, but he can make out that it's silvery underside is covered in pulsating suckers ringed with tiny, hooked teeth that snag the fabric of his shirt and the soft skin underneath it. 

He wants to scream. To throw up. To pry the tentacle off of himself, but he _hurts_.

“Hello?” he croaks, eyes tracing the tentacle into a particularly large shadow splattered against the adjacent wall. He doesn’t know if he _wants_ a response, to hear that voice again, but the heavy silence in his head has wrung him dry. He has no choice. He needs help. “Are you still... Is this... Will you let me go?”

“Depends...” The voice is hushed and damp this time, leaking out from the shadows like an ocean breeze. Changkyun feels ridiculously naive for letting comfort, calm, _peace_ wash over him. “Are you done flailing around?”

He should refuse to let his guard down, but the comfort coming from those shadows is all he has to cling to outside of the unbearable ache in his lungs, his limbs, his brain. He wants more of it, and he doesn’t care if he has to deal with a tentacle curling around him— he _wants_ that strange, out of place comfort.

“Yes, yes I’m done. Just, please, explain what’s going on.” He sounds just as he feels, like glass moments from shattering against the earth. He sighs, and the back of his head hits the cave wall with a dull _thunk_.

“Okay, but, _seriously_, don’t freak out this time.” 

The tentacle wrapped around Changkyun tenses. The shadow ahead bulges and stretches and swirls like a distant flock of crows. More heavy, squelching footsteps resound throughout the cave. Changkyun sucks in a deep breath.

A creature emerges from the dark, and Changkyun recognizes them instantly. Kihyun, the sea monster plastered between the pages of local history textbooks. Kihyun, the sea monster parents spread rumors about to keep their kids from swimming in the ocean at night. Kihyun, the sea monster he never quite stopped believing in.

“Kihyun. The sea monster,” Changkyun whispers. Kihyun pauses in front of his outstretched legs, raises an eyebrow down at him. Changkyun’s heartbeat falters.

They’re not as massive as the Kihyun who’s whispered about around beachside campfires, not as hideous as the Kihyun who’s accused of dragging countless ships into the sea. Sure, they have tentacles wiggling out from their chest and back —some with hooked suckers and others entirely smooth— flickering wildly and licking at the cave floor. Their skin is a watercolor of stormy grays and glistening silver, except for a slit of thick, white flesh that stretches from the center of their stomach down between their humanoid legs, disappearing and reappearing as the tentacles squirm. Twin halves of a squid fin undulate gently on either side of their face, as if steering them through calm waters. But, there’s something so familiar about the confused look in their eyes, the way their hands clench and unclench at their sides, their melodic tone.

“You’ve heard of me?”

A hand reaches up to smooth back their dark hair, slick with water or the same syrupy liquid that coats the tentacle wrapped around him— Changkyun can’t tell, but either way... He wets his lips. Clear his throat. Blinks up at them.

“_Duh_, I mean, you’re...” Changkyun wills himself to say anything other than the loaded adjectives bouncing around in his head. “You’re a legend. Like, I grew up hearing stories about you.”

Kihyun smiles and snorts, and Changkyun tries not to find it endearing. Kihyun uncoils their tentacle from around Changkyun’s torso, and Changkyun tries not to miss the squeeze as it slithers away.

“Thanks for making me feel old.” They crouch in front of Changkyun and search for something in his eyes. Their fingers hover over his forehead. “Can I...?”

Changkyun nods and holds his breath as damp fingertips just _barely_ brush his skin, skittering over his forehead, nose, and cheeks. Kihyun _hmms_, making a mental note of some kind, before leaning back to give Changkyun that same bizarre, searching look.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like a soggy, over-salted french fry.” Kihyun furrows their brows, and the thought that they’ve never heard of a french fry breaks Changkyun’s heart a little bit, but he continues, “Are you gonna tell me why the hell I feel like this, and how the hell I ended up here, yet?”

Kihyun’s weary sigh weighs down the stuffy cave air, sticks to Changkyun’s skin. They sit beside Changkyun’s outstretched legs, neatly tucking their own legs beneath themself. Their tentacles continue to sway, prodding lightly at the rock, at the air, at Changkyun. He tries to stay stone-still as they gently poke at his thighs and stomach.

“You’re lucky to be feeling anything— to _be_ anywhere at all. I found you, unconscious, sinking below the waves last night, and managed to bring you here— to my home, before the storm got _really_ bad. You feel like a— what was it? A ‘french fry’ because I have the waters around here charmed to ward off humans, but I didn’t have time to lift it because you were _drowning_, and...” Whisps of sadness, frustration, and exhaustion flit over Kihyun’s face. Changkyun sinks farther back into the cave wall. “There were all kinds of splintered wood floating above you, and you were all by yourself... What the fuck were you thinking, coming way out here in some tiny boat, right before a storm was supposed to hit?”

Changkyun’s skin crawls. His face heats up. Kihyun’s gaze is too sincere, too worried for a sea monster. They’re probably just trying to bait Changkyun. They’ll make him reveal all his deepest, darkest, most _human_ secrets, just before eating him whole; like they did with all those sailors decades ago, like they did with the neighbor’s kid just last month.

Changkyun hugs his legs to his chest, stares down at the cave floor, and ignores the sinking feeling in his stomach. 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Kihyun snorts, but there’s no mirth in it this time. No comfort. “Oh? _I_ wouldn’t understand?” Their tentacles scurry far, far away from Changkyun to form rigid coils at their sides. “You’re probably right. I’ve only been around since before your village laid its first brick, since before your people had a word for the blue beyond the sand. What could I _possibly_ know about human problems?”

“Just because you know _of_ humans doesn’t mean you _know_ humans. We’re— _I’m_ not the same as you,” Changkyun spits.

“No, you’re right, we’re not the same. If I were you, I would do whoever saved my life, brought me to their_ own home_, and tried their _best_ to comfort me the courtesy of explaining why I needed to be saved in the first place.” Kihyun huffs, but their coiled tentacles relax a second later, regret folding into their face. “But, maybe it’s personal; who knows? Regardless, you’re _welcome_ for saving your life, and I’ll let you know when it’s safe to leave.”

They start to gather themself up off the floor. Guilt swishes around inside Changkyun’s stomach.

“W-wait. Please.” Kihyun’s mouth sets in a cold line and their fins tense up, but they sit back down. “What do you mean, safe to leave?”

“Well, it’s high tide right now, for starters, and we’re far from your shoreline. Plus, I’m not done with the charm immunity potion for you, yet, because the...” Kihyun trails off. Fixes a lopsided grin to the questions plastered across Changkyun’s face. “I know, I know. Charms, potions, _magic_— you wouldn’t understand.”

Changkyun laughs despite the guilt still swirling in his belly. He traces his fingers along the divots and cracks in the cave floor, and tries to steady his breathing. Kihyun just wants to help. Kihyun just wants to understand.

“I’m sorry for... I don’t know... for being such an insufferable _human_. You’ve done— _are doing_ a lot for me, and I...” He clears his throat and forces himself to meet another impossibly sincere gaze. “It’s just that it _is_ personal, but you haven’t tried to eat me, or anything, so—”

“Is that what your legends say about me? That I _eat_ people?”

“Kind of, sort of, yeah, but we can dispel Kihyun myths in a second— I’m on a roll here, okay?” Kihyun gestures for him to continue, but Changkyun’s voice catches in his throat. He’s suddenly aware of how hollowed out he feels. Scraped thin. Raw.

Last time he had this conversation, he stole his parents’ rowboat and paddled farther out than he’d ever been before. He ignored the dark clouds crowding the sky and the creaking of the wood between his feet and the sloshing water. The oars shredded through the waves until land was a distant memory, until he was completely and truly _alone_. And then...

“I just wanted to be by m-myself—” His voice crackles and splinters. Kihyun shifts closer by a fraction of a fraction of an inch, but it comforts Changkyun, anyways. “My parents, they... I’m an adult now, so it shouldn’t _matter_ what they think, but... It’s a small town, you know? And if I’m—”

Waves crashing against rock. Bitter, cold ocean spray. Shards of sea glass underfoot.

“—_queer_, it means I’m, I don’t know... Different. Weird. _Queer_, when I should be a fisherman or a husband or, even, just a son with enough decency to pretend he’s like everybody else. So, I _knew_ a storm was about to hit and that my tiny boat could never weather it, but I wasn’t thinking about it. I was thinking... about clownfish. The little orange and white ones that just —_whoosh_— change sex. I realize that sex doesn’t work the same for fish and that it isn’t even the same thing as gender and I’m not sure that I would _want_ to be or look any different than _this_, but... I don’t know. Fuck. Sorry. Humans, right?”

“_Humans_.” Kihyun nods and smiles at him. The air between them is laced with something tender. Changkyun already feels a little fuller. More whole. “Sorry for pressing you about it, I... I get it. I do. Why do you think I live all alone in this hollowed out chunk of rock?”

The moment between words stretches out. Trickles into Changkyun’s skin. Tugs at something deep within him, beneath his breastbone, just above his fluttering diaphragm.

Kihyun’s skin shimmers in the cave’s inexplicable light, their little squid fins undulate steadily, and their cheeks and nose crinkle around a smile. Changkyun finds himself smiling back like he’s done it a million times before. Like he smiles at Kihyun, gentle and easy and intimate, every single day. 

Kihyun’s tentacles start languidly swishing and twirling through the air, along the ground, near Changkyun again. Changkyun’s head buzzes with warmth. He has to look away from the fluid, silvery, _human_ creature in front of him. He blinks down at his worn, damp shoes, instead. He doesn’t know what to say, or what to do about his frantic heartbeat.

“Let’s go see if the tide’s gone down, yet.” Kihyun stands, hands braced on their thighs and grunting like a grandparent, even as their many tentacles boost them upwards. They tilt their head in confusion when Changkyun bites back a smile. “You feeling up to walking? I could carry you, if not.”

“C-_carry?_ Me? No... No, I’m—” Changkyun splutters and scrambles to his feet, trying his best to think about _anything_ other than being wrapped tightly in Kihyun’s tentacles, carried around wherever they like, and... “I’m good, thanks. Good. I can walk. Thanks.”

Something sharper than confusion tilts Kihyun’s head and quirks the corners of their mouth upward. They gesture for Changkyun to follow them down one end of the tunnel. Changkyun shuffles along at their side; maybe, possibly, purposefully not dodging Kihyun’s tentacles as they wave around, brushing against him. Even through the material of his pants, they’re cold and damp. Their gray hues swirl and glisten as they pass through shadows. The noise of Changkyun’s nervous throat clearing comes out too harshly, echoes too loudly. He winces.

“Where’s all this light coming from? And you never explained how you know my name.”

Kihyun follows his gaze over the downward sloping path lined with shadowy rocks and glinting puddles. Gives him another smirk. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Changkyun would feel sour about being left out of whatever magic Kihyun is hinting at, but he figures that every legendary sea monster is entitled to a little mystery. Plus, the ground starts getting wetter, and natural lighting starts to invade the shadows. 

Changkyun picks up his pace, ignoring Kihyun’s barked warnings and sliding down the steepest part of the tunnel yet, until the ground abruptly drops off. His toes hover at the edge of a small cliff, waves lapping up no more than a foot of exposed rock to spit saltwater on his shoes. The cave continues to stretch out and out, slowly opening up to make room for the sea and the stars and an impossibly bright moon.

Kihyun’s wet footsteps interrupt the gentle, breaking waves as they maneuver to the little outlook and crouch to dip their fingers in the water. One of their smooth tentacles joins their fingers to dance over the water’s surface. Their forehead scrunches with concentration. Changkyun expects _something_ to happen —for sparkles to burst out from their hand, or for them to start full on waterbending— but nothing does. Kihyun just stands back up. Flicks water from their fingers and tentacle. Shrugs. “Seems like we’ll have to wait a few more hours, at least.”

Kihyun climbs back up the slope, tentacles darting in all different directions to find purchase in the jagged rock, smoothly bringing them to the peak.

“Are you messing with me?”

“What?”

“Like, can you _really_ do magic, or was that wiggly-finger-tentacle-thing just now for show?” Changkyun starts to climb up after them, but his shoe slips over a particularly smooth, wet stone, sending him straight back to the bottom. He huffs with frustration, finds a different foothold, and continues, “Are there just a bunch of lamps hidden somewhere farther back into the cave? Are you actually super into cosplaying local lore and—”

Halfway up the slope, he finds himself stuck with no higher footholds. He huffs again, slaps his hands down, and _stretches_ towards the next nearest large rock. It certainly _looks_ sturdy enough to hoist himself up with.

“Do you want me to...?” Kihyun bends towards him, but Changkyun tosses his head and hips around in place of a dismissive, flappy hand gesture.

“No, no. _Shush_. I’ve got this.”

Changkyun furrows his brows. Pushes his tongue between his teeth. Grunts. The rock isn’t _that_ far away, and he did a lot of swimming this summer, so he should be plenty strong enough too— 

The rock gives him purchase for all of two seconds, before flinging itself into the sea with a splash and knocking Changkyun completely off balance. He yelps and thrashes his arms around uselessly as his feet slide out from under him. 

He’s already come to terms with the fact that he’ll probably never recover from the embarrassment of landing flat on his back and hurtling into the water after that bastard rock —_right_ in front of someone so bizarre and endearing and... _attractive?_— when a tentacle coils around each of his arms from his wrists to his shoulders. He’s swiftly pulled upright and tugged all the way to the top of the slope. 

“Shit,” he breathes. He lands far too close to Kihyun, panting as if he were the one who just lifted a _whole entire human_, unable to tear his eyes away from the glossy, moonlit tentacles curled around him. Sliding against his skin. _Squeezing_. Kihyun doesn’t pull them away; they give Changkyun an irritated look, but _don’t pull them away._

Changkyun’s brain tosses and turns over reasons why the tentacles gripping him don’t mean anything, why Kihyun _just_ means to help. He almost fell. They helped him up. That’s it. Easy. 

“Why are you so _stubborn?_ If you would’ve just let me help...” Kihyun’s voice is crisp with frustration. Their tentacles tighten ever so slightly as they roll their eyes, and Changkyun notices that the one twisted around his right arm has suckers ringed with teeth, that they prick at his cool skin. Kihyun can’t help that this particular tentacle is spiked, has no idea what the tiny teeth feel like embedded in Changkyun’s skin. They just wanted to help. That’s it.

And, it _would_ be easy, if Kihyun’s eyes didn’t gleam in the moonlight. If their tentacles weren’t so strong and pretty and slick. If Changkyun were better at keeping all traces of inexplicable attraction from his voice.

“_Shit_.”

Because they have enough tact for the both of them, Kihyun sculpts and resculpts their expression into one of nice, appropriately leveled concern.

“Oh, sorry, am I hurting you? I can—”

The tentacles ease up a bit and, faster than he can even begin to process the loss of the slippery, chilled pressure, Changkyun’s brain makes him take each tentacle in his own hand and pull himself closer to Kihyun. Ridiculous. Reckless. But Kihyun looks even stranger, even _prettier_ up close, and their skin feels so nice beneath his rock-roughened palms.

“Don’t— _really_. It’s fine. Please. You were saying?”

Their breath falters. Their eyes narrow. Hesitantly, they continue, “I... Uh... Do you think I’m _lying_ about the magic? Because I’m not. I just don’t quite... have the language for it— not in a way that’ll make sense to you, anyhow. You trust me, don’t you? I’ve been nothing _but_ honest with you, Changkyun.”

The way their voice trails off at the end, dissolving into barely more than a whisper, and impales Changkyun on a silver hook that tugs him back to reality. He releases his grip on Kihyun’s tentacles and takes a step back. Urgent apologies and reassurances start to spill out of him, but Kihyun shushes him softly.

“No, no, it’s okay. I understand. This is a lot to take in. I’ll try my best to think of some way to explain everything— to explain _me_ to you, okay? Just... give me a little more time.” Changkyun nods. Twin, relieved sighs drift into the waves below. Kihyun tightens and untightens their lips, scrunches their forehead, catches Changkyun’s eyes. “But... have _you_ been honest with _me?_”

Their cheek fins go rigid. Their hair and skin and eyes glint. Something hot worms its way into Changkyun’s belly. He sucks in damp, salty air.

“W-what do you mean?” 

He _must_ be imagining it, but Kihyun pulls him a little closer, just before his shoes meet their toes. They smile and tilt their head again, but there’s something too quick about the expression, too shrewd. But, Changkyun _must_ be imagining it because Kihyun’s a _legend_, a great sea monster of yore, and they wouldn’t... they couldn’t be... coming onto him? _Flirting?_

“I don’t think you realize that I— I can tell that you... Most humans, at best, recoil at the sight of these things, but _you_...” Kihyun hums and shakes their head. Their cold tentacles slip higher up his shoulders. Changkyun clears his throat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve been watching them _very_ closely since you came to, and I don’t think that’s disgust radiating off of your skin.”

Jittery panic settles into Changkyun before he even realizes he’s being caught off guard. His chest is far too tight; he can barely breathe and his voice is practically _squeaky_ and— is it normal to have _this much spit_ in your mouth at one time? “Are you talking about more mysterious monster magic, or...?”

“Every time I open my mouth, my— um. Well. This might scare you.”

Slick, jittery... _curiosity_ about what a sea monster finds scary sinks into Changkyun. He grips their tentacles once more and nods for them to continue. He’s just curious. He wants to know. That’s all he wants.

Kihyun breathes out a short, incredulous laugh. Parts their lips. Cracks their jaw open. 

Beyond their perfectly, predictably human gums and teeth and tongue, lies a _giant squid eye_. Nestled in the back of their throat. A massive, dark pupil at the center of a pearlescent eyeball. Wide. Unblinking. _Horrifying_.

And Changkyun can’t fucking help it— his gasp and wobbly knees are worthy of some dramatic Victorian lady who’s just been proposed to by the richest dude in London. Kihyun’s tentacles hold him upright —which does _not_ help— and Changkyun’s voice is _definitely_ squeaky.

“The. It. Y-you... It’s... A little—” Kihyun just raises their eyebrows as he flounders. Tugs him a little bit closer; closer to the tentacles bursting from their chest, closer to their pretty lips, closer to that eye. “_Cool_. Cool.”

And Kihyun _must_ realize Changkyun had a very different word on the tip of his tongue because their features crumple as they laugh, eyes and lips going all scrunched as they try to hold it in, fins flapping wildly as they fail. It warms Changkyun in a completely different way than the decidedly _un_cool feeling of being stared at by the huge eye inside their mouth, now locked away behind their smile.

Changkyun’s cheeks tingle. His breath fans out over Kihyun’s shimmery skin.

“Does this mean you know how I’m feeling right now? Like, with y-your eye?” The air clings to his skin. Salt lines his nostrils. 

“It’s sort of like... You’re throwing pebbles into the water, and I can tell roughly what size the pebbles are based on the ripples over the surface. So, for example...” Kihyun’s fingers brush hair from his forehead, which Changkyun isn’t convinced is part of the magical ripple reading process, but then their jaw falls open and that eye is staring _right_ at him and he can _feel_ it's dark, beady pupil tracing all of his features and— “You’re, uh... You’re turned on, and a little embarrassed and a little scared, but the ripples aren’t crashing into each other; they’re overlapping.”

“Ah, _fuck_.” Changkyun has to scrunch his eyes shut and swallow his hammering heartbeat. “This is so unfair. I’ve got my kink quiz results tattooed over my face, but I can barely understand shit about you _or_ your magic, let alone your _kinks?_ Fuck being human. This shit sucks.”

“Would you be able to understand everything a bit better if I kissed you?”

Changkyun’s eyes snap open, frantically scanning Kihyun’s face for any discomfort or ridicule or uncertainty. But they’re just... Glossy. Gray. Kihyun.

“We could give it a shot?”

Kihyun kisses him. A flash of lightning. A sprinkling of icy salt water. Then they pull away, fins still rigid, with an exhale frozen behind their teeth.

“I’m... Are you _sure?_” Their voice is so light that it doesn’t even bounce against the cave walls, that Changkyun barely hears it over the moving water below. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. Just because I’m _this_ doesn’t mean I’ll... You don’t have to do anything with me, Changkyun. You can tell me if it’s too much. You’ve had a rough day and—”

“The big, bad sea monster who’s terrorized my town for centuries is _worried_ about me?” Changkyun boggles his eyes until Kihyun pushes out a relieved, yet slightly annoyed, puff of air. “I’m really, _really_ okay. I’ll tell you if I’m not, and you do the same. We’ll say ‘french fry’ if we need to stop, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay.” Kihyun visibly relaxes, their tentacles swaying softly, tickling Changkyun’s legs. “But, I’ve never _terrorized_ anybody.”

“I wish you would.”

“Oh. _Oh_. You do?”

A grin scrunches Kihyun’s face into something small and shiny and sharp. The tentacles in their chest wiggle, dart towards Changkyun, and wrap around him, pulling him even closer. 

It’s cold. Cold and wet. 

And Changkyun sinks into Kihyun, kissing them for real this time as they tighten their grip on his arms. Their cheek fins dust Changkyun’s cheeks with butterfly kisses. They taste like brine and their mouth is ice cold and they kiss like they’re drowning, like Changkyun’s drowning, like they need each other’s air to _survive_—

Changkyun goes limp in their hold. There’s an eye back there, just beyond their tongues. What if he accidentally touches it? Is it _watching_, even now? What if it’s staring straight into his mouth? 

He moans. Kihyun walks him backwards until his spine touches stone.

“What is it? What do you want, baby?” Kihyun hums into his mouth, his achingly smooth voice echoing against his tongue and teeth, up into his skull.

“_Baby?_” His knees betray him and he sags against the cave wall. His dick pulses in his pants. “_Fuck_. Can you... How do I? I _want_, but how do we...?”

“Use your words. What does baby want, hm?” There’s something so damn amused and smug about the way their cheek fins are flapping, but they’re also a really hot, really terrifying _sea monster_ and they’re calling him _baby_ and he just—

“Want you to fuck me somehow, someway. _Please_. However you can. I- I want you inside me, Kihyun.” 

“_Cute_.” Kihyun pecks his nose. Gently rocks him in their hold. Makes him feel tiny. “Baby wants me to fuck him with _these_ things?”

Kihyun’s back tentacles stretch up over their head, waving around in a sexy tentacle monster’s imitation of a halo. Their tips graze Changkyun’s skin. The toothed suckers glint as they move. Changkyun’s overcome by the sense of just how _human_ he is, by how badly he wants _something else_ inside him.

His mouth falls open. A smooth tentacle extends forward to brush against his bottom lip. His insides tangle themselves around each other, hot and sticky and painful. He sticks his tongue out to meet the tip of the tentacle, and Kihyun slowly slides it up, up, up his tongue. 

“Suck,” they whisper. Changkyun closes his lips around it, making obscene sounds as he swirls his tongue around it and hollows his cheeks. Kihyun’s breathing gets heavier. Their gaze stays locked on Changkyun’s mouth. The tentacle coats his tongue with the sharp taste of salt, but its chilled skin warms against his palate. It’s thick. It’s heavy. It prods impatiently at the back of his throat.

They lock eyes. Kihyun raises an eyebrow. Changkyun nods.

The tentacle pushes up against the back of his mouth, flickering over where his tongue meets his throat, and Changkyun _yanks_ Kihyun forward. That thick, sinewy fold of white skin between Kihyun’s legs presses against his clothed dick. The tentacle rams into the back of his throat.

Changkyun turns to syrup, bubbling out around Kihyun’s tentacle and oozing everywhere between them. The tentacle wriggles around in his mouth, sliding over his teeth and cheeks, getting warmer and warmer. And it scares Changkyun a little. Scares him that it could just dive all the way down his throat, that he’s not sure how much control Kihyun has over it.

The tentacle starts to retreat, but it feels so solid against his tongue. So nice pushing against his cheeks. He sucks on it harshly, eyes pleading up at Kihyun to let him keep it inside. Kihyun’s mouth falls open with surprise. Their answering moan is high and crackly. 

Another tentacle slips around their waist to slip between Changkyun’s legs, pressing against his crotch and curling back to his ass, damp and cold. He shivers. Rubs against it.

“_Mmm_— Ki—” Drool slides out of his mouth as he tries to speak and dribbles onto his shirt, onto the tangled mess of tentacles touching and holding and _pushing_.

“_Mmm?_” Kihyun imitates his pleased whine. Gives him something between a pout and a smile. Fond. Teasing. “Let’s undress you and lie down, hm?”

Kihyun disentangles themself from Changkyun and steps back, but Changkyun’s hands fly to the tentacle still in his mouth, holding it in place. He sucks gingerly and massages the slimy skin beneath his fingers. Suckling noises resound throughout the cave.

“Shit. Okay, okay. You just stand there will I undress you.”

Their touches are feathery soft, fingers nimbly unlacing his shoes and unzipping his pants, and Changkyun distantly wonders how many zippers and shoelaces Kihyun’s encountered in their lifetime, how they got so good at removing clothing despite not wearing any themself. And he’s content to wonder, to not know. All that matters right now is the warming tentacle between his lips that twitches when it grazes his teeth, that shudders when he hollows his cheeks, that Kihyun’s sharing with him.

The salty cave air blankets his senses and chills his dick. He sways. His eyes start to slide shut. Kihyun pats his bare thigh.

“Stay with me, Changkyunnie. We have to take your shirt off. You have to let go—” Their voice shatters as Changkyun sucks harshly once again, shoving more of the tentacle into his mouth. It tosses and turns, and makes his cheeks bulge out. Kihyun grabs him by the shoulders. “Don’t do this to me. Baby, please, it’s time to let go now.”

But Changkyun just wants to keep sucking. Wants to keep feeling the slippery warmth. Wants to stuff his cheeks with it. He stamps a foot and tosses his head back.

A toothed tentacle coils around his thigh, scraping and pinching the plush skin from his knee to his hip, coming dangerously close to his reddened dick. Changkyun stays rooted to the spot. It clamps down.

The pain jolts him back to awareness, countless prickly needles and eager suckers kneading his doughy skin. He cries out. Falls to his knees. He loses his hold on the tentacle in his mouth as he topples, and he’s left with nothing but the taste of ocean water and a pin pricked thigh. He scowls down at the slick rock, at the precome beading on the head of his dick.

“What happened to the sweet, needy baby who wanted to get fucked so bad? Don’t get stubborn with me— I’m _trying_ to give you what you asked for.”

Changkyun wants to ask for that smooth, warm tentacle back. _And_ he wants to ask to be fucked. It doesn’t really seem like an either/or situation.

He runs his eyes over Kihyun’s figure. They’ve got their hands on their hips, looking down at him expectantly. Their tentacles fan out towards him, not _quite_ reaching him. They seem especially silvery in this patch of moonlight. Changkyun sighs.

He removes his shirt and tosses it behind himself. Kihyun steps forward, and he plants his hands on their thighs, batting his eyelashes as he kneads his fingers into their skin like scooping up forgotten coins from an icy sidewalk. He presses soft kisses onto one of their thighs, leaving each patch of skin with a light nip before moving upwards. He wants to decorate Kihyun’s skin in kisses, wants to warm them up with his lips alone.

He reaches the white slit trailing all the way up to where their belly button would be and freezes mid-kiss. “Can I... Is it okay? Will it feel good?”

“I’m not sure you wanna do that.” Kihyun tangles their fingers in his hair and rubs his scalp. Tentacles settle against his back. “You can’t exactly...”

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, Kihyun. It's seriously okay if—”

“No, no it isn’t that I don’t _want_ you to; it’s just that it won’t feel like much of anything to me because _this_ isn’t what _that’s_ for.” Kihyun gestures vaguely, their face turning every shade of gentle and nervous and frustrated possible. “And I know you liked my eye, but—”

“Oh, so you’re saying this will _scare_ me?” Changkyun wedges his chin between Kihyun’s knees. “What are my emotion ripple thingies telling you now?”

Kihyun heaves a sigh, and Changkyun catches a peak of the giant squid eye, before a few of Kihyun’s spiky tentacles guide his arms behind his back, neatly cross them, and secure them in place. Changkyun bounces on his knees, completely fixated on the white fold in front of him.

“You’re gonna freak out,” they murmur, but amusement flickers in their silvery skin.

Something bulges beneath the fold, slowly widening the slit. The sound of a wet peach splitting open echoes. And a fucking _beak_ emerges from the squishy, pale flesh between Kihyun’s legs like cut obsidian from a jeweler’s hand. Its jaws clatter and click, nipping away at the centimeters of air between it and Changkyun’s face. The movement bizarrely mesmerizing— pretty, even. The jaws are so pointed, it’s hard to imagine how they fit inside Kihyun’s squishy, slippery body. Maybe it hurts, maybe the beak is always pinching at them from the inside, maybe Kihyun keeps it tucked away for their own safety, too. Changkyun finds himself leaning forward. 

“Nuh-uh.” The tentacles around his arms tug him upright. “You _definitely_ don’t wanna do that.”

“_Why?_” Changkyun whines. Puffs his lips out at the chattering beak, at Kihyun.

“It’s sort of like the tentacles. Not completely under my control.”

Changkyun’s stomach twists and flutters. He wants to know if the beak is cool to the touch, if being inside Kihyun warmed it at all. Wants to know if the widened, white slit is as slick and smooth as the rest of Kihyun’s skin.  
He darts his eyes up at Kihyun for permission to rest his head against their thigh. Cold slime against his scalp makes him shiver. The beak’s clacking gets louder, more urgent. He’s close enough to imagine it catching a few strands of his hair, snagging his skin, pinching.

“Stop making that face.”

“_What_ face?” Changkyun’s gaze slides upward, his bottom lip turns out as far as it possibly can, and his cheek nuzzles into their thigh.

“_That_ face.” Kihyun tries to look stern, but it just comes out fond. Crinkled eyes, flickering fins, the corners of their lips refusing to bend into a frown. A draft rises up from the ocean, ruffling their as it passes into the stretching, hollow cave. Changkyun presses his tongue against the rough of his mouth and clears his throat way too loudly for the umpteenth time.

“Will you choke me?” 

Kihyun’s response is a bubbling concoction of surprise and uncertainty and excitement.

“Yes, I’m sure. Yes, I know what I’m asking for.” Changkyun settles his ass back onto his heels, bounces a little just so Kihyun’s flustered gaze latches onto the solid, flushed dick hovering above his thighs. Kihyun gulps down air and their hands flap uselessly at their sides. Changkyun _would_ come up with something witty about them being just your average fish, after all, but his belly is tightening. The tentacles are warming around his arms. Tremors are running through his thighs. “Not hands— _tentacles_. Please?”

Kihyun’s expression crinkles as if he’s the one who’s turned into a little fish, flopping on the docks, helpless and panicked. Changkyun is about to plead again, when one frigid tentacle untangles itself from the squirming mess bursting out from Kihyun’s chest. It slithers over his thighs, dick, chest; icy against his heated skin. Changkyun swallows thickly as it coils around his neck, stretching up over his chin to wiggle its tip over his lip.

“_Kihyun_,” he whispers and tickles the end of the tentacle with his tongue. Kihyun looks at him fondly, gently. The tentacle squeezes. Blood swarms in his ears, the frigid pressure making his spine shiver and his mouth fall open. He goes limp, swaying on his knees while the tentacles tug at his arms. He swallows his pounding heartbeat.

“_Baby_.” Kihyun melts to the ground. The tentacle releases. Changkyun guzzles down the salty, heavy air whirring around the cave. Shudders. Moans. 

“Again?”

Kihyun grabs him by the hips, and Changkyun is, yet again, grateful for their inhuman strength as they rearrange his boneless, shaky body on top of their own, seemingly unfazed by being sandwiched between Changkyun and damp rock. Changkyun straddles their fluttering stomach, and can’t help but rub himself against the slimy skin. Want crashes against his skull in time to the waves below.

“_Again_, Kihyun? Again, again, _again_,” he pleads. Kihyun’s tentacles release his arms, shivering as a pitchy curse tumbles out of Kihyun. Their skin looks metallic against the dark stone. Their fins waver. Changkyun presses his hands into their chest, right below the mass of tentacles, and sees that suction cup bruises are already blooming over his skin. He rocks against them _harder_, but it _isn’t enough_.

The tentacles beneath Kihyun’s back wind around Changkyun’s legs, pricking and sucking and anchoring him in place. The chill of Kihyun’s body does nothing to snuff out the heat, to ease the tightness. His dick pulses. He digs his fingers into Kihyun’s skin.

“Beg, baby.” Kihyun’s eyebrows crinkle their forehead as if they didn’t notice the words perched on their tongue, toppling over their teeth. Changkyun nearly sobs.

“Oh, _fuck_. Choke me again. Please, please. _Again_. Fuck me, let me suck on a tentacle again. I need it.” He’s beyond desperate. Kihyun looks at him like they’re afraid he’s about to crumble to pieces, tumbling down into the sea. “I need it all really, _really_ fucking bad, Kihyun.”

They get through half of a jerky nod and a sharp inhale before a tentacle rushes into Changkyun’s mouth. It twitches and skids against his teeth and cheeks, tangles with his tongue. Slick. Salty. Ocean water; seaweed swishing around inside him. It muffles Changkyun’s pleased moan.

“I wanna be inside you, too, okay?” Kihyun’s voice barely reaches Changkyun’s ears, but he nods quickly. Their urgent, gasping breath gets caught between their teeth. A smooth tentacle glides beneath Changkyun’s aching dick to prod at his ass. It slowly slips inside, twisting and bending to get Changkyun used to the increasing thickness. And then there’s a whole tentacle up his ass, a whole tentacle _inside_ of him. It’s gross and cold and squirmy. Like gobs of sweat cooling against his back. Like—

“Cold spaghetti,” Changkyun whimpers around the tentacle in his mouth, but he isn’t sure Kihyun hears or understands him because their eyes get wider and wider, and when Changkyun sucks at the tentacle filling his mouth up, they _roll back_. The tentacle around his neck squeezes lightly in response, but just for a moment, leaving Changkyun agitated. He needs _more_. Really, _really_ fucking bad. He pounds weakly at Kihyun’s chest.

“I know, I know. It’s okay, baby. You’re doing so good. I’m gonna give you give you what you want. I’m gonna _fill_ you,” they murmur. The tentacle skims over his walls, and it must be coating his insides in slime because slippery, squelching noises fill the cave. Somehow, some way it finds his prostate, suctions onto it, and starts wildly undulating. The urgent sucking and pinching from within makes Changkyun wail and collapse against Kihyun. 

“Oh, fuck. Oh, _fuck_.” Kihyun’s voice creaks like wood moments from splintering. The tentacle falls from Changkyun’s mouth, trailing drool and slime down with it. Kihyun takes his face into his hands, and peppers it with light kisses. Their smooth, icy touches just make Changkyun feel warmer.

_F__inally_, the tentacle chokes him again. His brain turns to mud beneath the sun, to bubbling tar. His hips rut against Kihyun, stuttering and heavy, and the beak just behind his ass starts clattering again. Changkyun jumps. Gurgles. The clicks and clacks slam into the cave walls, his eardrums. The pressure in his throat builds and builds and _builds_, leaking down to his toes.

And then the tentacle goes limp around his neck. He sputters out a moan. Feels the blood rushing to his cheeks. 

“You’re _unbelievable_,” Kihyun sobs. The toothed tentacles squeeze tighter around his legs, suction cups popping and nipping. More flit over his cock. Prick at its skin. Give a quick, stuttering stroke. He’s swelling with feeling, want, need. He isn’t sure he can take much more without bursting. He grips Kihyun’s wrists, their hands still pressed against his face.

“C-can I come? _Please_, tell me I can come.”

Kihyun’s visibly overwhelmed, arms shaking as they bring his face closer to their own and every exhale dragging out a breathy moan, but their smile is quick. Certain. 

The tentacle inside Changkyun manages to drag more of itself upward while still latched to his walls. Changkyun can _feel_ it coil up, tangle around itself. Slippery and freezing. _Writhing_. Changkyun starts shivering, and the salty spittle that drips from his mouth lands on Kihyun’s silvery cheek.

“Kihyun, _please_.”

Kihyun, cold and wet under him, inside him. Kihyun, sucking and twisting under him, inside him. He’s drowning, _drowning_ in Kihyun. 

“Okay, baby.” Kihyun’s fingers curl around the back of his neck, tug him downward until his eyes fill with their smile. The smile cracks open. The huge eye _stares_.

Changkyun’s come splatters between them. The orgasm sloshes through him, towing his moan behind it as he’s unable to tear his gaze from the eye in Kihyun’s throat. He turns to liquid in Kihyun’s hold, their tentacles the only thing keeping his mushy body away from the, now silent, beak. The tentacles make way for him to settle against Kihyun’s chest.

“Did you...? Are you...?” he wheezes. The last tentacle slips out of him, but he still feels _filled_. Like there isn’t enough room for the air in his lungs, for the thoughts in his head. 

“Yeah. Yes, baby,” Kihyun wheezes back. Changkyun splays his palms over the rippling gray puddle of a creature beneath him. They soak into him. Settle. “Takes a lot, you know. For a human.”

A chill seeps into the air from the cave floor; it rises up and up into the vast emptiness all around them, whispering. The ridges, jagged edges of the rock beneath their bodies digs into Changkyun’s bent legs. Hard. Uncomfortable. He doesn’t understand how Kihyun laid here the whole time with Changkyun’s weight on top of them.

“To do what?” Changkyun’s eyes trace over Kihyun’s glittering, swirling skin and relaxing, stretching tentacles. He rises with their swelling chest. He listens to the damp air whoosh inside their lungs. He holds his own breath when he realizes Kihyun’s about to exhale, about to speak.

“To want. To trust.”

Changkyun exhales.

His fingers, fingertips, fingerprints dance along Kihyun’s chest, dipping between tentacles to feel the skin below. Changkyun doesn’t know whether Kihyun would ever completely warm beneath his touch, whether his rough hands would ever abrade their smooth skin. And he’s content to wonder, to not know. _Something else_ matters right now.

He wiggles his fingers in Kihyun’s face and smiles. Flicks imaginary water off of them. Gentle. Easy. Intimate.

“A few more hours?”

“At _least_.”

**Author's Note:**

> responses of any kind make the stars shine brighter!!!  
u can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/showmeurteef) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/showmeurteef)


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